Food

Day One will be at the Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp 6 miles from my start point.  This will be a great way to ease into the miles and have a hot cooked dinner and breakfast.

Food Weight:  About 2 lbs per day.  Actually 1.7 lbs.  That's a lot but it represents my choice for a lunch and a few extras for dinner.  Your choices would likely differ from mine.

And how do I carry all this stuff?  Fortunately there are a few key resupply points along the way.

Resupply points:

• Day 7 will be at Sonora Pass.  I mailed an 11 lbs box to Sonora Pass Resupply. They are from Coulterville CA and take their truck up to Sonora Pass and wait for PCT hikers to come by and claim their packages.  That will keep me full for the next 6 days.
• Day 13 will be at Echo Lake on Hwy 50 near south Lake Tahoe.  The folks that own the Echo Lake Chalet keep a store open till 5:30.  I will eat from their menu and get a few things to hold me over until I walk to my brother's family cabin the next morning.  It takes me 10 miles to get to Echo so one more day on the trail is in order. 

Another twist to all this is the requirement to use a bear canister to carry and store the food throughout a majority of the hike.  Read more about that here.

OK, so what's on the menu?   No real surprises here except two key changes to Lunch and Dinner. The key change to Lunch is that now there is a lunch!  Every day.  For Dinner, CW and I made our own meals from scratch.  Read on…

BREAKFAST:

• Some days are planned with cold cereal and chocolate instant breakfast. I made packets containing ¾ cup of Granola. I added brown sugar and raisins to each packet.  I will make 1.5 cups of milk using a great tasting full-fat product called NIDO.  Just add cold water and mix. Pour a ½ cup of this milk over the Granola.  Then add ¼ cup of Nestles chocolate instant breakfast mix into the remaining cup of milk.  The beauty of this meal is there is no stove, no fuel.  On a high mileage day, it allows me to break camp quickly and perhaps prepare it after a few early miles.
• The remaining  meals will be instant oatmeal and VIA coffee.  Oatmeal is not my favorite, not by a longshot.  But it does pack a lot of calories that seem to stick with you through the morning.  To enhance the taste of my ½ cup servings will be more brown sugar, raisins, and a dash of NIDO.  This option requires fuel, a cooking pot, and soap for cleanup.

LUNCH:  I can no longer hike for eight hours without a lunch.  Power bars and trail mix are a lead weight in the pack and a strain on your mental outlook regarding that culinary void between B & D.  My moment of Zen was discovering that Time can substitute for Heat to rehydrate a meal.  Heat means fuel and weight. You will need to set up a stove, and have a pot, then the cleanup, plus time to unpack/repack.  It just doesn’t work on a trail.

• Instead, I now put a serving of dehydrated red beans and rice into a small bowl with a seal tight lid. Later, during a rest stop about an hour before the lunch bell sounds, I pull the bowl out of the top of my pack, add 1.5 cups of water, toss it back in my pack and keep hiking.  At my next stop, I grab the bowl; add a packet of Tuna, and Bam!  It is so, so good.  Real food, real taste, real calories.  A moment of Zen indeed.  In a word, Awesome. In 2016 we also made our own Taco meat with refried beans to add to to the lunch meal.

 DINNER:  You have hiked all day. You have camp chores to do. The bugs are coming out and it’s getting colder and darker.  The least you can do is reward yourself with a decent meal.  This year CW and I found a few websites on how to dehydrate your own meals.  We bought a Nesco 500 dehydrator and got cookin.  The results were outstanding.  Thanks CW!

    

• Entrees include Beef Stroganoff, and Beefy Cheesy Mac. Each serving is about 4 oz.  Rehydrating takes about 20 minutes in hot water sealed in my bowl.  One exception is Old El Paso Tortilla stuffers.  These are a sealed, heat and eat meal.  They have meat rice and beans.  They are really really good but they weight 9.5 oz! So I pack one for the first night after resupply so I don’t really have to carry the weight too far.

• Sides are instant mashed potatoes. These aren’t what Aunt Edna made 30 years ago. These are really good and they mix perfectly in less than a minute. Flavors are 4 Cheese, Loaded, Garlic and a few others.  I split a 4 oz package into 2 meal servings.
• Flour tortillas are an absolute must for me.
• Dessert includes a Cliff Builder Bar.  This is a tasty Protein Bar that fills the bill for adding protein after exercise to help restore muscle tissue.  I think the reason this bar is so tasty is that it is a Soy based protein, not that awful Whey based stuff.   Finally, a packet of a flavored drink mix.

ALL THE REST:  I bring one power bar and one candy bar per day to fill in the gaps between B and L, and L and D.  If my mileage plan includes a long vertical section over a mountain pass, I include one or two goo shots to be used specifically on that segment of trail.  My preference is GU Chocolate Mint.

***********************************

HYDRATION:  Electrolyte replacement is very important, as is a disciplined hydration schedule.  I have found that Camelback brand electrolyte fizzie tablets work great, taste very good, and the tablet vs. powder form is better suited while on the move.  My own acronym for electrolytes is CAMPS: CAlcium, Magnesium, Potassium, and Sodium.  All these need to be replenished to keep your mind and body operating properly.